Gacha games make so much money these days that there’s now a steady stream of new launches each and every month, almost always aggressively marketed. Some go on to enjoy mind-boggling financial success;Genshin Impact, for example, has mademore than $5 billion since it arrived in late 2020and has seen a slew of copycats follows in its wake. Others are doomed to never make an impact. So, it’s understandable that everyone wants a piece of the pie, with some publishers even leveraging some of the industry’s biggest IP to make it happen.
Two of the most talked-about gacha games right now arePersona 5: The Phantom X, a big-budget spin-off of Atlus’ all-time JRPG, andUmamusume: Pretty Derby, which began life as a mobile game, and has since spread to other media like anime and manga. Both launched globally on the same day last month, and I’ve been playing both daily ever since.
And in my eyes, they couldn’t be any more different in terms of how they work in terms of monetisation.
The Phantom Thieves: Insert Coin To Progress
Promising players the full Persona 5 experience across mobile and PC, The Phantom X includes everything from palaces and the Metaverse to strengthening social bonds through daily activities. It’s so authentic to the original game that it almost feels like you’re playing its illustrious sibling.Similar story beats, same gameplay, just different teams of Phantom Thieves.
However, the one thing that makes it stand out from the original is that it features the usual kind of predatory gacha tactics you dread when firing up one of these games. While you’re able to theoretically play through the main story completely for free, it’s everything else that is designed to drain your wallet.
There are instances where an enemy or boss is too strong, or requires a particular elemental setup to defeat. This is cleverly designed to push you into acquiring specific characters and their weapons, and who may be ‘meta’ picks better suited to the latest content.
However, due to the accelerated schedule of character releases to catch up with the four-year-old Chinese servers and the pitiful amount of regular ‘free’ resources gacha games often give you as incentives to play, the only way to do this is to spend.Naturally, this has angered many players.
This is before we mention the obscene energy gating of resources needed to level up Thieves, weapons, Personas, and abilities, as well as the battle passes and constant ads for ‘discounted’ packages in the store.
While The Phantom X is clearly designed to prey on the classic gacha tactic of instigating fear of missing out (FOMO) on the latest character or weapon in order to progress, Umamusume: Pretty Derby feels significantly different. For starters, you barely notice monetisation when playing. I’ve probably put in an average of two hours every day since launch, well over a hundred hours in total, and I haven’t seen a single pop-up ad for something that requires me to spend money. Its premium currency store is tucked away in the menu, rather than being front and centre. It’s incredibly refreshing, and a lot of this is due to the type of game it is.
For the uninitiated, Umamusume: Pretty Derby sees you train up a bunch of racehorses given typical anime girl form, a kind of moe anthropomorphism. Its mechanics are surprisingly deep - you play out their three-year careers, with the aim of winning championships and putting them out to pasture to serve as legacies (parents) to even stronger offspring. It feels like playing a roguelike visual novel Football Manager, where every run is an incremental step forward.
Using What You Have Well Is Key To Success In Umamusume: Pretty Derby
In order to make your horse girls stronger, you’ll use support cards of the many characters to give them a head start in their careers, unlock access to race-defining abilities, and increase their stat gains as the schedule progresses. These cards are crucial to progress and form the primary gacha element alongside new racers themselves.
Naturally, there are a bunch of meta cards that people online will tell you are must-pulls, fromrerolling initial accounts to get Fine Motion and Super Creekon launch to the current discourse about Kitasan Black being the second coming of Christ. However, actual progress in the game is not gated by whether you have these cards or not. You can still win all the races, strengthen your horses, and earn a whole bunch of currency and resources without these cards, because more important to success is how you analyse what you do have, and plan your career playthroughs accordingly.
In fact, the meta cards are probably only relevantin PvP; a five-race series that is simulated instantly rather than fully animated and played out like career races. Of your few hours of daily gameplay, you’re talking maybe five minutes. And you’re never going to beat the whales, even if you min-max your teams, so why stress?
So, the only real FOMO in Umamusume: Pretty Derby comes from listening to people on social media and forums, and not the game design itself. Even if you do get swept up in it, chances are you’ll end up with the meta cards anyway thanks to the hugely generous amounts of free currency the game has given out so far, andthe pity system in placethat guarantees a pull if you fail to acquire a banner’s featured card within 200 pulls.
I went 190 pulls without getting a single SSR-rarity card of any kind, let alone Kitasan Black.
I have all three of the meta cards named above, with Kitasan coming through said pity, and I’ve spent precisely £3.99 in real money. It was sitting in my Steam Wallet after selling some old collectibles, and there was a levelling resource pack for beginners I impulsively bought because I have too many games on Steam already. I’ve not once been tempted to put actual money in for pulls, and that’s not likely to change.
Maybe, and I’m just speculating here, the reason for Umamusume: Pretty Derby’s less egregious monetisation is becausethe characters are based on actual racehorses- even down to their personalities - and are not complete works of fiction. The game having such a predatory reputation could damage the image of the actual creatures in real life and could even open up a legal can of worms. I’m no lawyer, but I wouldn’t like my brand associated with that.
I’m likely to ditch Persona 5: The Phantom X in the very near future, simply because I get bored of games that gate progress so heavily. I don’t want to spend months just trying to catch up with a release schedule, only to still be far behind. With P5X being this way, I don’t think it will last anywhere near as long asthe biggest-hitting gacha gamesbefore its servers are closed. I do, however, see myself going the distance with Umamusume, simply because it’s so much fun to play without ever feeling like I’m a prisoner to FOMO. Plus, I still have a Finals race to win with Haru.
